Declan Walsh

Well, after 18 months of a pretty brutal siege led by this paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, which had been trying to seize control of this city called al-Fasher.

It was the last major urban center in western Sudan that was beyond its control.

It finally broke the siege and its troops seized the entire city.

They expelled the Sudanese military from it.

And what followed was really days of reports of atrocities against about a quarter million civilians who'd been trapped inside the city.

First, we saw these videos start to come out showing bodies piled in buildings, sometimes fighters executing wounded people lying on the ground, often quite casually.

These videos, it must be said, are filmed by the fighters themselves as kind of trophies for the war, which is a pattern we've seen since the start of the Sudan war.

And since then, that's been added to by accounts from witnesses, from people who fled the city, from aid groups, and now from open source investigators who are using satellite images

to try and determine what's been happening in El Fasher.

And just last week, a new report from one of those groups saying that they had uncovered evidence that 80 people had been killed in one specific incident.

Others have found traces, in fact, from satellites of blood on the sands of the area around El Fasher.

That's right.

I mean, 20 years ago, Darfur, in fact, became synonymous with the word genocide.

And that's because at that time, there was an armed militia called the Janjaweed that was leading a lot of the killing in Darfur, a conflict that killed as many as 300,000 people.

The difference this time is that the Janjaweed has been replaced by another group called the Rapid Support Forces, effectively its descendant.

That group is better armed than ever before.

In the past, the Janjaweed fought with horses and camels.

This time, the Rapid Support Forces have got armored vehicles, extremely sophisticated Chinese drones.

Last time, the Janjaweed were fighting alongside Sudan's army.

This time, it's fighting against the army.